Technology's On Display At New Science Center

SAN JOSE, CALIF. — Technology has given us computers, jumbo jets, men on the moon, cars that talk, nuclear warheads -- and The Technology Center here, which is going to explain all those things.

What is more, when the unique museum and education center opens in the fall of 1988, it is going to explain technology complete with warts: the misses as well as the hits, the failures that led to successes.

Technology is one of those words that defies description. ''I don't know how successful we'll be,'' said Jim Adams, president of the center, ''but our intention is to demystify technology and give people a better sense of the process.'' In other words, Adams' intention is to define technology. Where the dictionary falls short, The Technology Center plans to step in.

Adams is chairman of Stanford University's Program in Values, Technology, Science and Society, is a former art student and a current professor of mechanical engineering and engineering management at Stanford.

It is technology's ''messy'' process, as Adams characterized it, that gets a product out of the factory door and into the marketplace. The Technology Center aims to take its visitors by the hand and guide them through the maze of that messy process.

''Technology has more compromise than science,'' Adams said. ''If you're trying to understand the structure of the double helix, you don't think of what engineers call trade-offs. But if you're trying to develop a computer for a certain number of dollars in two years so you can warranty it for a year, J!j3 00yK&